Safe at last: Older and infirm pets find a retirement home

MONROE — The chickens and the cat get along just fine.

They share a 14-by-14-foot straw-lined cage a few yards from the office at Pasado's Safe Haven, a sprawling, 80-acre animal sanctuary, tucked in the wooded foothills of the Cascades near Sultan and Monroe, about an hour northeast of Seattle.

The cat, Homer, is a 10- or-11-year-old black domestic short hair. Most of the time, he sits atop his carpeted scratching tower, coolly surveying his 11 cage-mates. Once in a while, he'll hop down and give one of the chickens a playful swipe.

Homer must be quarantined from the other cats here because he has Feline Immunodeficiency Virus, or FIV, the feline version of HIV.

"Most people don't believe that a cat can live with chickens," laughs Susan Michaels, co-founder of Pasado's Safe Haven. "There's never a problem. He'll get along with whatever I put him with."

Homer was brought here from a nearby animal shelter, where he would have been euthanized because of his infection.

Luckily for him, he is one of the first beneficiaries of a new program here at Pasado's Safe Haven called AARFF — the American Association of Retired Felines and Fidos.

The program provides homes to cats and dogs who have been abandoned because they have become too old, too sick or simply too inconvenient.

"They are discarded more than you think," Michaels says. "It's amazing."

Each year, countless thousands of pets such as Homer are put down in shelters around the country. According to statistics from King County Animal Services, 6,151 dogs and cats were euthanized in shelters in unincorporated King County in 2002. Don Jordan, manager of Seattle Animal Shelter, a division of the City of Seattle, said his facility euthanizes more than 2,000 animals a year.

The Seattle shelter has a network of about 150 foster families that care for pets while they try to arrange an adoption. But in some cases an adoption isn't possible — especially if the pet is very old or very ill — and the only option is euthanasia.In such cases, Jordan said, a program such as AARFF would provide a welcome alternative for shelters. "Any program that provides care for geriatric pets is a very good resource for this region," he said.

Michaels is convinced that many of those "unadoptable" animals are capable of living happy lives, particularly if they are given the proper environment, which is where AARFF comes in.

Pointing at Homer, who appears to be playing tag with a rooster, Michaels says, "He can live for years."

"Pasado's Safe Haven's mission has always been to help the animals that fall through the cracks," Michaels says.

She and her husband, Mark Steinway, founded the organization nearly 12 years ago, after Pasado, a donkey, was beaten and strangled at a Bellevue park, in a case that received significant media attention. The organization is funded entirely by grants and donations.

Michaels and Steinway's early efforts focused on rescuing mistreated livestock, on animals that were victims of cruelty, and on advocating tougher state animal-cruelty laws.

Three years ago, they unveiled the Spay Station, a mobile spay/neuter clinic offering the procedures free to pets of low-income individuals around Puget Sound. In three years, the Spay Station has spayed or neutered more than 10,000 animals. (Fewer unwanted animals means fewer incidences of cruelty, Michaels says.)

AARFF is the next phase of Pasado's Safe Haven's evolving, ambitious mission. Though elderly pets discarded at shelters aren't necessarily victims of abuse, "they deserve to be treated with humaneness and respect," Michaels says. "Age is not a disease."

Being left at a shelter must be traumatic for the animals, she says. "Strange voices, strange smells — it's gotta be frightening," she says. "It's a whole lot better than dropping them on the road, but not much."

Michaels and her army of volunteers plan to send letters to about 300 animal shelters around the West Coast, letting them know about AARFF. Pasado's Safe Haven will arrange pickup and transportation for the animals. Michaels says the goal is to make it as effortless as possible for shelters to avoid euthanizing elderly and infirm pets. "If they're not aggressive, we'll take them," she said. At this point, Michaels says, the program has the capacity to house about 100 dogs and 100 cats. When the animals arrive at AARFF, they will be placed in Dog Towne or Kitty City.

Dog Towne is a 30-acre fenced-in area where dogs are free to roam wooded trails. They sleep in 12-by-16-foot heated cabins, with thick beds and mountain views.

One of Dog Towne's residents is Clarence, a 14- or-15-year-old mostly white-haired yellow lab. Clarence manages to project an air of dignity, even with a plastic cone around his neck. "He was Sean Connery in his last life: strong, tall, handsome," Michaels likes to say.

Clarence likes to try to rub his head against anything he can find — trees, fences, human legs. He was brought here from the Everett shelter a month ago, and his fur looks a lot better since he's been here, Michaels says — although his tail is still pretty patchy. A flea infestation left him with several patches of bare skin. The fleas are gone now, and once his skin heals, he'll be able to ditch the cone.

He also has problems with arthritis, and when he runs along after the other dogs his movements seem exaggerated, as if he's walking on ice or spinning his wheels.

"He's got tumors on him, and he gets a bath every other day to help his skin," Michaels says. "Before, he never wagged his tail. Now, he wags his tail."

A few hundred yards away, a group of cats lounge on the deck at Kitty City. Among them are 16-year-old Grandpa and 10-year-old Schnozz.

The deck opens out to a fenced-in wooded area about the size of a city lot. There are rubber barriers on the fence posts so the cats can't climb out. And there is an electrified wire along the top to keep cougars or bobcats from jumping in. If the cats don't feel like hanging around outside, they also have access — through a kitty door — to a 1,300-square-foot house stocked with cat trees and beds.

The AARFF program owes its existence to volunteers, Michaels says. "This was an enormous amount of work that would have cost us thousands upon thousands of dollars." There are currently about 100 volunteers, she says. "But we always need more." For instance, "We don't have someone to massage Clarence every day."

Michaels and her husband — who themselves have "a houseful of dogs and cats" — work at Pasado's Safe Haven on a volunteer basis, too; they live on their retirement savings.

When asked about her days as a local television personality — she co-hosted KING-TV's "Seattle Today" from 1987 to 1991 — Michaels, 47, rolls her eyes. "I'd prefer if people just forget that," she laughs.

She has found her work here to be much more rewarding, she says: "To be able to, hopefully, leave a legacy — it just fulfills you every day."

Jesse Tarbert: 206-464-2540 or jtarbert@seattletimes.com